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Xiao Liwu, the giant panda cub at the San Diego Zoo, is now 22 weeks old. He’s close to being mature enough to be put on display at the zoo. In the lively cub’s 20th medical exam, shown in the video above, Xiao Liwu’s coordination and range of motion have increased. It seems as [...]

Even if you live somewhere that never snows (like those of us in San Diego) you can still make your own snowman this year with a little bit of parmesean cheese and a lot of ground beef. Now that’s a tasty winter wonderland.
Link Via Buzzfeed

The US Navy’s base at Norfolk, Virginia is the largest in the world. It can berth a vast number of ships. On 20 December, the station was packed with five aircraft carriers and four amphibious assault ships:
Five aircraft carriers, four big-deck amphibious assault ships, a full cast of “small boy” surface warships, along with nuclear [...]

Everyone knows that parrots can mimic human speech. So can a few other birds, including ravens and starlings. But it’s not just birds that speak up. Here are a few less obvious examples of animals that have learned to sound like people.
1. Asian Elephant
At least one elephant is using his trunk for more than just [...]

You know that if a zombie dies, you have to destroy his brain, but assuming the zombie apocolypse hasn’t thrown law and order out the window, will the cops arrest you for running down the streets slaying the undead? After all, they used to be human, so is it murder to rekill them? San Diego [...]

The famous mascot of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is not one lion, but five lions. These are their stories.
Slats (1917–1928)
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Slats, born at the Dublin Zoo in 1919, was MGM’s first lion. He had previously appeared in the logo of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, where designer Howard Dietz chose the lion as a mascot as a tribute [...]

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In the wild, giant panda mating occurs just as nature specials would have you believe. There’s intense competition for each female, and the dominant male will mate with her several times to ensure success. And that strategy works: Wild female pandas generally give birth every two years. But that low birth rate means that [...]

A strange case of a woman with a hand amputation lends credence to the idea that our brains know what our bodies should be like, even if our bodies vary from the norm. The woman, referred to as RN, was born with a deformed right hand that had only three fingers. That’s all she ever [...]

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For some athletes, the Olympics aren’t just a competition: they’re a chance to escape oppression. Earlier this week, seven of Cameroon’s athletes disappeared from London’s Olympic Village. The week before, three runners from Sudan’s Olympic training squad filed for asylum in Britain. Here’s a look at some other Olympic defections.
1948 Summer Olympics: London
Marie Provaznikova, [...]